Trump administration warns over 500 hospitals to provide more price information or face fines
Trump administration warns over 500 hospitals to provide more price information or face fines
(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has warned more than 500 hospitals that they are failing to provide the public with basic pricing information — arguing that the lack of disclosure is keeping healthcare costs higher than they should be.
The Associated Press obtained exclusively the list of hospitals that since April have either received letters of warning or, in more severe cases, requests to submit plans to provide transparent pricing. Failing to comply with the warnings comes with penalties as high as $2 million annually for each recipient that doesn’t create a plan to post clear pricing data.
The letters are meant to fix a fundamental problem that patients, employers and insurers might not know ahead of time the cost of blood work, an imaging test or another form of treatment, and as a result pay more than they should have. The AP has posted the list of hospitals that have received letters.
A senior administration official who requested anonymity to provide the list said President Donald Trump plans to tighten enforcement of price transparency standards made possible by a 2019 executive order signed by Trump. More hospitals are likely to receive letters regarding the absence of pricing data, the official said.
The warnings are the latest example of Trump leaning into the message that his administration is fixing the problem of healthcare expenses that can drain a family budget. It’s a calculated pitch ahead of the November midterms at a time when affordability is a top concern for voters. But Trump is also vulnerable on this particular issue, as his administration allowed subsidies to lapse for people buying insurance through the 2010 Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare.
Just 29% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s healthcare policies according to the most recent survey on the issue by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The president fared slightly worse on that issue in the December survey than on the economy, immigration or his management of the federal government.
Data on healthcare prices can be confusing
Gary Claxton, senior vice president and the director of the program on the healthcare marketplace at KFF, said the pricing data is more useful for benefit consultants and others in the sector with access to additional information than it would be for consumers. But he said the standards in reporting pricing data can still create difficulty in making accurate comparisons about the costs and quality of the services being provided.
“There’s a pretty widespread belief that prices are more divergent than they should be in a competitive market — and this is one way of trying to understand that more,” Claxton said. “It’s moving in the right direction, but that doesn’t mean it has gotten to where it needs to be.”
The American Hospital Association said in a statement that its members have long supported price transparency and the majority of hospitals are complying with the federal requirements that went into effect this year.
Still, Ashley Thompson, senior vice president for policy at the association, noted in the statement that “the current system is not working as well as it could for patients” and that hospitals would continue working with the administration to improve pricing information and transparency.
The push for price transparency could have a particular impact on Republican strongholds like Texas, Florida, Indiana, Alabama and Louisiana, which are among the states with the highest count of hospitals that have not provided adequate information on the costs of medical services.
Texas had 42 hospitals that received warnings, more than any other state. Baptist Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, among the state’s largest hospitals with 1,585 beds, received a letter, as did the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center said that after it received notice from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, it found “a minor formatting issue involving a date field” that was “quickly corrected.” The center said the government accepted the updated documentation and there “were no concerns regarding the integrity or completeness of the data.”
Missouri-based Ascension, one of the country’s largest hospital systems, had 13 hospitals in multiple states that received letters. Ascension said the warning letters identified a “minor technical error” and it’s committed to giving patients “the information they need to make informed decisions.”
The Republican state of Indiana had 34 hospitals that received letters, nearly as many as the 38 in Democratic-led California, even though California has five times more people than Indiana.
Administration officials interviewed for this article noted that Christiana Hospital in former President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware also received a warning letter.
Different approaches to tackling high costs
The letters reflect two competing philosophies between Republicans and Democrats over how to handle the ballooning expense of healthcare, which is also a growing risk for the federal government’s own balance sheet.
Biden’s team put more emphasis on record enrollment in Obamacare programs that increased the percentage of people with health insurance. Biden also signed a bill that allowed the government to begin negotiating prices for some Medicare drugs directly with pharmaceutical companies. That program, which has continued into Trump’s second administration, has helped knock down the list prices of some of Medicare’s costliest drugs.
The Trump administration, by contrast, has focused more on trying to find ways to provide details on pricing — such as promoting the TrumpRx site for prescription drugs — betting that doing so will lead to better and more efficient spending on healthcare as the data gets crunched.
Critics have said Trump’s negotiated prices on prescription drugs might not produce genuine savings for many Americans with insurance, while the administration has estimated savings in excess of $500 billion over 10 years.
With the various lists of hospital prices, the administration wants providers to make it easier to access the files and to ensure the information in them is legitimate, instead of being based on estimates or omitting numbers for key procedures.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has a hearing planned for Wednesday on price transparency.
“Transparency is the foundation of a healthcare system that rewards competition based on cost and quality,” Shawn Gremminger, CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions, plans to say in his prepared remarks.
(Corrects translation to “problem-maker” not “troublemaker” in second bullet point and in paragraph 9) BEIJING/TAIPEI, June 10 (Reuters) – China and Taiwan sparred on Wednesday over the legality of
The fire service warns of large plumes of smoke and tells local residents to keep windows shut.
Another nine people were injured at an informal settlement in Cleveland late on Tuesday.
Parts of the North York Moors to be restored and repaired after devastating fire last summer.
By Nestor Corrales and Karen Lema MANILA, June 10 (Reuters) – The Philippines said on Wednesday that it is urging Beijing to remove a floating structure placed at the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the
Amid the chaos, he slipped out of his imprisonment in a Hezbollah cell and made his way to the green hills overlooking the Lebanese capital. There, in the posh diplomatic quarter of Baabda, he disappeared inside the gates of the Ukrainian Embassy. Where he is now is a mystery, tangled up in an ongoing spy game as Hezbollah attempts to root out Israeli intelligence operatives that have infiltrated the militant group.
A night of disorder in Belfast saw people forced to flee their homes, in protests that followed a knife attack in the north of the city.
Police find items that need specialist assessment after a warrant leading to cordon.
Grassroots venues in Leeds and Sheffield see their buildings bought by Music Venue Properties.
Dozens of rescuers in hard hats scrambled out of a partially collapsed grocery in a southern Philippine city Wednesday as it was rattled by an aftershock from a powerful earthquake that left at least 45 people dead and 17 others missing in the region. A safety officer blew his whistle and others screamed to warn about 30 firefighters and coast guard personnel to dash to safety as concrete debris crashed down from the leaning three-story building in General Santos city in a frantic scene witnessed by an AP video journalist. The coastal city, a bustling commercial hub and the country’s tuna capital, was devastated by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Monday and left a trail of destruction across southern Mindanao, the Philippines’ second-most populous region.
ATHENS, June 10 (Reuters) – Greece’s parliament approved legislation late on Tuesday to fast-track deportation of rejected asylum seekers and allow their transfer to “return hubs” outside the bloc
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) sent four engines and a specialist height team to the scene.
Voters also headed to the polls in primary elections in Nevada, North Dakota, and South Carolina ahead of the midterms.
A manhunt was underway in South Africa for “more than 10” suspects, police said.
Emergency services were called to Heanor Road in Ilkeston at 04:46 BST on Wednesday.
Anti-immigrant protesters in the UK have taken to the streets on Tuesday, after a 30-year-old man believed to be from Sudan was charged with attempted murder following a knife attack in Northern Ireland that Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned as “horrific.”
Former States-sitting politicians talk about dealing with losing and what they’ll do next.
A packed programme of events is planned in Cleethorpes despite changes due to Pier Gardens work.
By Amanda Ferguson BELFAST, June 9 (Reuters) – Masked men burned families out of their homes in Belfast in a wave of anti-immigrant violence on Tuesday night after a Sudanese man was charged over a
A review of the front page stories from the daily newspapers in Scotland.
Powered by WPeMatico